I've read Steve's 1997 essay on the Nutcracker performance at the Peoria Civic Center Auditorium.  (I'd link to the essay, but the YaBB system won't let me do that until I've racked up five posts.)

What kind of local reaction has there been to this story?  Has the sound system changed in the years since this story was published?  I found a photo gallery from the Civic Center web site that shows how the theater must look today.  Again, I can't link to it directly, but a google search will find it.

Have there been much of a reaction from your friends and neighbors there in Peoria, or has the essay enjoyed an audience beyond your audiophile customers?

My impression is that Steve didn't like it!

I attended a concert there a few years ago and will never do that again.

What a great story!

I remember reading this "essay" a few years ago.  But now I understand why Decware gear sounds so RIGHT!!!  I've been perusing the perfect sound in my home(s) for more years than I care to admit, and it wasn't until I heard Steve's gear in my home that I realized I was on the right path to that perfection.  If you look at my signature, you will see I am heavily embedded with Decware gear, and I plan to "UPGRADE" as soon as I can.  Steve's ear has been "embedded" with the same qualities I am looking for in my system.  I can't wait to hear his OLT/SET's this coming weekend, and I welocme the discussions that I'm sure will ensue.

Dan

I may as well finish the rest of the story...

As you can see from the photos farther up the page, the stained glass was well... righteous.  Imported it was... and by the 1960's I would say nearly priceless. There was one window that had to be repaired and it has always stood out like a sore thumb. I used to sit in church and wonder why someone would think it acceptable to repair such a work of art with clear glass. It was sad. I never did know what happened to it, I just assumed someone threw a brick through it.

I was around 9 years old. Discovering my mechanical side I had just finished taking my moms toaster apart and putting it back together again... which I don't mind saying was unbelievably hard.  Nevertheless I succeeded and got great confidence from it. So as you can imagine the day I picked the lock under the organ pipes in the choir loft, and discovered the hidden room with all the "real" pipes in it, I was a prime candidate to become an organ repair man.  

One of the things that always bothered me when I would play the organ is that I could never get the last set of foot keys to do anything. You could stand on them all day long, and silence. Obviously this wasn't right... even a 9 year old knows this.



So when I went into the room and found some of the large wood pipes were unhooked, and now being a highly qualified organ repair man having just fixed my moms toaster that I broke when taking it apart...




I quickly took the unhooked leather hoses with the brass fittings and re-attached them to the three largest wooden pipes.  Below is a picture to give you an idea of the size of these pipes...



These were driven by a pair of large canvas billows that were operated with an electric motor.   It was about 4:30 P.M. on a school day when I congratulated myself for being so brilliant cause I just knew this would fix those broken organ foot keys.

I ran back out into the sanctuary to test my handiwork. I climbed up on the organ and turned it on. I could hear the billows breathing even louder than in the past since I left the hidden pipe room door open. My heart started pounding and finally I stepped on the 3 up to now, silent foot keys.

I received enlightenment at that very moment as a bass note from hell swelled into my reality... I'll never forget it. The entire building seemed to shake. I was a hero!  

It didn't last long however.  Within what seemed like mere seconds, my dad came running into the sanctuary from the side door closest to the house and slid along the polished oak floors in his socks and underwear trying to make the corner similar to the way my cats slide around on the hardwood floors in our house.  He was headed over to the organ where his target sat in horror.  

I got the belt for that one and my only satisfaction was that they had to call an organ company to come out and unhook the pipes... which I naturally assumed was because I did such a good job putting them back together.

So, I learned about not asking and what real bass was all in one day.  I say real bass because to this day most subwoofers sound like a rowboat compared to the titanic.  Apparently, the organ's bass itself was responsible for breaking the priceless stained glass window I stared at every Sunday and well, you just gotta love it.

Between all the secrets rooms in that church, the bell tower, and my best friend's playground who's dad ran the largest mansion in town... the funeral home, lets just say I had an interesting childhood.  I enjoy looking back on it and I especially miss the sound in that church.

Lon, that's so cool!

Sadly as you know this is a thing of the past.... I mean think about it...  "we added an addition to the church so that we could have an organ". Hell, the addition, the imported organ from Germany, probably cost as much as the church did to originally build.  

Just this year I had an chat with a modern day organ guy who was developing samples for the digital organs of today. 100% fake, 100% of the time. When we die, that's it,  ignorance will win and no one will know what they're missing!

I envision bass from the future being a butt plug that works similar to an ear bud.

Steve  :)

Hah! That was a joke I didn't expect!

You're probably right, knowledge of even the experience, let alone the building and repair, will die out in time. But that's the way of the world, and other pleasures will be available we can't even imagine!

Thanks, Steve.  Great stories and some unfortunate truths.  Fortunately for me, my daughter/Nutcracker memories are much more pleasant.  We were living near San Francisco, and my daughter, Zoe, performed in the first act party scene in the SF Ballet production at the Opera House with full orchestra.  Great music, great acoustics, and fond memories.

When I was growing up in NH, we attended a church built in 1847 (a hundred years before I was built), now shuttered and closed due to changing demographics.  It, too, had marvelous stained glass windows, which now reside in a new church in Massachusetts.  There was a 19th century E. and G.G. Hook & Hastings pipe organ, which included 16 foot pipes.  It had a tracker mechanical action, so the more stops that were pulled out, adding pipes to the sound, the harder the action was to play.  A friend of mine, an organ student, got permission to play it, and I discovered that little old Mrs. Claire Sasserville, the Sunday organist, used only about ten percent of the instrument's capabilities (maybe she was afraid of blowing out the windows  ;)).  In any case, a sound less heard these days.

Off topic, I learned that my ZP3 will ship today.  It will replace a 15 yo Creek solid state phono pre.  When the new ZP3 is hooked up to my ZMA I am expecting musical nirvana!